She must have recognized him from the photograph he had sent, and in
stature and figure he recognized her as the ideal he had cherished,
though her head was gilded with the light from the lamp, and he could
not make out whether her hair was dark or fair; her face was, of course,
a mere outline, without color or detail against the luminous interior.
He managed to ask, dry-tongued and with a heart that beat into his
throat, "Is Miss Simpson at home?" and the girl answered, with a high,
gay tinkle:
"Yes, she's at home. Won't you walk in?"
He obeyed, but at the sound of her silvery voice his heart dropped back
into his breast. He put his hat and coat on an entry chair, and prepared
to follow her into the room she had come out of. The door stood ajar,
and he said, as she put out her hand to push it open, "I am Mr.
Langbourne."
"Oh, yes," she answered in the same high, gay tinkle, which he fancied
had now a note of laughter in it.
An elderly woman of a ladylike village type was sitting with some
needlework beside a little table, and a young girl turned on the
piano-stool and rose to receive him. "My aunt, Mrs. Simpson, Mr.
Langbourne," said the girl who introduced him to these presences, and
she added, indicating the girl at the piano, "Miss Simpson."
They all three bowed silently, and in the hush the sheet on the music
frame slid from the piano with a sharp clash, and skated across the
floor to Langbourne's feet. It was the song of _La Paloma_ which she had
been singing; he picked it up, and she received it from him with a
drooping head, and an effect of guilty embarrassment.
She was short and of rather a full figure, though not too full. She was
not plain, but she was by no means the sort of beauty who had lived in
Langbourne's fancy for the year past. The oval of her face was squared;
her nose was arched; she had a pretty, pouting mouth, and below it a
deep dimple in her chin; her eyes were large and dark, and they had the
questioning look of near-sighted eyes; her hair was brown. There was a
humorous tremor in her lips, even with the prim stress she put upon them
in saying, "Oh, thank you," in a thick whisper of the voice he knew.
"And I," said the other girl, "am Juliet Bingham. Won't you sit down,
Mr. Langbourne!" She pushed towards him the arm-chair before her, and he
dropped into it. She took her place on the hair-cloth sofa, and Miss
Simpson sank back upon the piano-stool with a painful provisionality,
while her eyes sought Miss Bingham's in a sort of admiring terror.
Miss Bingham was easily mistress of the situation; she did not try to
bring Miss Simpson into the conversation, but she contrived to make Mrs.
Simpson ask Langbourne when he arrived at Upper Ashton Falls; and she
herself asked him when he had left New York, with many apposite
suppositions concerning the difference in the season in the two
latitudes. She presumed he was staying at the Falls House, and she said,
always in her high, gay tinkle, that it was very pleasant there in the
summer time. He did not know what he answered. He was aware that from
time to time Miss Simpson said something in a frightened undertone. He
did not know how long it was before Mrs. Simpson made an errand out of
the room, in the abeyance which age practises before youthful society in
the country; he did not know how much longer it was before Miss Bingham
herself jumped actively up, and said, Now she would run over to Jenny's,
if Mr. Langbourne would excuse her, and tell her that they could not go
the next day.
"It will do just as well in the morning," Miss Simpson pitifully
entreated.
"No, she's got to know to-night," said Miss Bingham, and she said she
should find Mr. Langbourne there when she got back. He knew that in
compliance with the simple village tradition he was being purposely left
alone with Miss Simpson, as rightfully belonging to her. Miss Bingham
betrayed no intentionality to him, but he caught a glimpse of mocking
consciousness in the sidelong look she gave Miss Simpson as she went
out; and if he had not known before he perceived then, in the vanishing
oval of her cheek, the corner of her arched eyebrow, the point of her
classic nose, the original of the photograph he had been treasuring as
Miss Simpson's.